One UK school system becomes a managed network monitoring provider

Schools in East Sussex are on a robust wide area network (WAN). Yet when East Sussex County
Council ICT Schools Services wanted to implement network monitoring and client management, it was
careful to avoid a solution that was dependent on the WAN. So the ICT ultimately became a managed
network
monitoring provider, selling optional services to participating schools.

While most of the schools in East Sussex buy some IT services from the ICT, they don't
particularly want to be forced into doing so, especially at a time when many of the 192 schools in
the district are becoming independent academies or federated schools.

“It is a different political environment we are facing, and that was one of the key
considerations that we had when we were looking at how we redeveloped our services. Gone are the
days when we could provision something centrally and enforce that on schools,” said Kris Scruby,
ICT Schools Services manager.

That leaves the ICT in an odd position since it needs to upgrade the network and then ensure
reliability through network monitoring and client management. After all, many of the East Sussex
schools are increasingly dependent on network access, with Internet connections to interactive
whiteboards in every classroom, for example.

These schools had an optional Metro VPN broadband connection, which connected them to each other
and the council as part of the National Education Network, now called the East Sussex Education
Network (ESEN). But the ICT's services were creaking with age: “Our support services were over 10
years old and were very much time-centric with scheduled visits and had become quite reactionary,”
said Scruby.

To improve matters, the ICT will develop the ESEN into a public services network (PSN) with
partners, including NHS, the police, fire and rescue in what will essentially be a “network of
networks within East Sussex,” Scruby explained.

To enable dependable remote connectivity on that network, the ICT bought the CentraStage network
monitoring tool, which is not dependent on the WAN.

“There were different routes we could have taken. On client management we looked at about seven
different products including the previous solution, NetOp Remote Control, which just did basic
remote support and was far more dependent on being on the WAN,” said Scruby.

Then the ICT developed a managed network monitoring and management service known as the Premier
Service that costs the same as the old service. Scruby specified client management to every device,
as well as the ability to monitor LANs. He evaluated Microsoft solutions including SCCM (System
Center Configuration Manager), and “some of their network and client management tools.”

“We looked at NetSupport, Symantec, all big enterprise systems that offered some fantastic
facilities and benefits,” he said. “However, it was the political driver that became difficult to
us. To put in the infrastructure required for those systems was very costly because we needed to
install equipment here and within the schools and an extensive number of software licenses. There
was also the issue of domain control, domain authority.”

Every Sussex school has its own domain, and although they all share the WAN, there is no Active
Directory control from each local authority: “That would be quite a difficult sell to schools, to
say we would have a higher level of domain control within the authority.”

CentraStage does not depend on an Active Directory infrastructure. “The central management
function is outsourced securely and that acts as a gateway so that we don’t just have the ability
to bridge into any of the schools in East Sussex, but we have the opportunity to use that system as
we seek to offer services beyond our borders and form partnerships with other local authorities. It
was a long-term view,” said Scruby.

More on network monitoring systems

“Some of the other products we found were very geared up to an organisation that is not going to
split up or change. Our schools are like customers; they could leave the authority, they could come
back in,” he said.

Almost 7,000 clients sit in schools and the council, and they are bridged over port 443 Internet
outbound gateways. CentraStage allows monitoring of devices that support SNMP. “We are
starting to look at this, but many schools do not always buy managed network equipment of a quality
recommended that supports this functionality due to cost,” said Scruby, who is forced to be
creative in his managed network monitoring: “We are able to monitor network outages by monitoring
the clients in conjunction with other tools, [such as] WhatsUp Gold and StatSeeker.”

Scruby has seen an increase in the incidents the service has been able to support remotely. “We
are able to set criteria and proactively go out and fix it without a customer having to log
it—really powerful stuff,” he said.

He is now looking to move beyond standard network and device management to drive even more value
from the monitoring implementation by monitoring power usage: “As the client is on the PC, anything
that happens is reportable and it is easy to relate that, based on published information, to how
much electrical consumption a device would be using.

“During the last summer holiday period over six weeks we found that nearly 25% of computers were
left on in school—a lot of devices using a lot of electricity. This summer we can plan to turn
those off remotely.”

The “holy grail,” according to Scruby, is to demonstrate how ICT is improving attainment within
schools: “It is very early days, but we are starting to look through some of the reporting. With
the monitoring we have in place, and we haven’t developed this yet, it is still a concept, we feel
the next step is to try and bridge the two.”

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